Ubuntu 8.04 and Firefox 3 Beta 5

[Avi Greenbury]

On Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:13:42 +0200
Christoph Bier <christoph.bier at web.de> wrote:
> 
> I had many problems using FF2 on my i386 based box and I had to use
> Epiphany and Opera, too. But with FF3 I have some more problems. No
> sound I did already mention. But it just hangs very often so I have
> to restart it. This didn't happen with FF2.
> 

This, I would suggest, is an exception rather than a norm. I've heard lots of reports of increased stability in FF3b on all sorts of platforms.

>
> At the moment I don't want to believe that it's really impossible to
> have recent and stable software (I used Debian for about six
> years---with many backports ...). Maybe you have more experiences in
> different OS than me.
> 

It is, and I'd call FF3b stable in every sense of the word except as a release identifier.
It is stable in terms of functionality and look and feel - it's not going to look or work any different by the time it hits release.
It is stable in terms of usability - it is far less prone to crashes than much else that is available (including its predecessor)

I really don't see how Ubuntu could have done it any other way. To include FF2.x now and at some point spring FF3.x on unsuspecting users goes completely against any notion of common sense, and to include FF2.x now and not upgrade until long after the end of support for FF2.x is also a pretty stupid idea.

It's not a _good_ decision, but it's the best they could manage, so far as I can see. It's just an unfortunate mis-scheduling of software releases...


> > There is _never_ 'no chance for any trouble' in a software
> > upgrade.
> 
> Maybe. But then there should be a notice before upgrading what kind
> of data loss can happen. If it was there I've overlooked it.
> 

I think it's taken as a given that people know this. Personally, I'd be hacked off if every time I tried to upgrade anything my computer warned me that things might break. I _know_ this, and imagine (possibly incorrectly) that most other people do. It also would have the effect of lessening the percieved meaning of other messages that tell you when you really _could_ break your system (like removing debian-core for example). If you never get warning messages, when one does pop up, you're far more likely to notice.
Maybe there should be a primer to using computers that would explain such things as the possibility of problems when making major system changes, and the likelihood of software changes with an OS upgrade?

<snip>

> But again: It was just the last straw. Only this FF problem wouldn't
> be enough for me to think about a different OS. But all of this
> hardware and driver issues drive me crazy. For weeks I want to buy a
> webcam but I don't have the time to search for a good cam that's
> supported by Linux. The same for a scanner. 

Please, it's not that Linux doesn't support it. It's that it doesn't support Linux. The model applied for all other OSs is that it is the responsibility of the hardware manufacturer to supply the drivers, not of the OS vendor to figure out how the hardware works. Why should this be different for Linux?


<snip>

>				On my wife's new ThinkPad with
> a Core 2 Duo Ubuntu runs soo slow that I can't believe it (not to
> mention the special keys ...). 

Really? I've never had an issue with any of my ThinkPads. This R61 did everything correctly out of the box, which is more than I can say for the Windows install it came with...
Which ones are they?
I am sure you've come across it already, but thinkwiki[1] is a great resource for info about Linux on Thinkpads.

[1]http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki

-- 
Avi Greenbury